[lit-ideas] Re: Obama, McCain & Milton

I'm interested in the sort of "reading" that Fish is doing of this campaign
... the application of a narrative form to a political process.  I can't
decide if I think it is formalized and forced or not. And now, having gotten
this far, I find myself unable to articulate quite what I mean or what my
questions about that are.  Maybe another cuppa ....


On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 3:34 PM, Veronica Caley <molleo1@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>  <Jesus is usually the political model for Republicans,>
>
> I often read Prof. Fish but this time, re the quote above, me thinks the
> good professor is smoking something.  And it's not cigarettes or cigars.
>
> Re the rest of the article, it's not exactly true.  I hear Obama attacking
> the McCain campaign rhetoric frequently.
> Also, the adds Obama launches are not exactly friendly, but I find them to
> be true mostly.  However, Obama is steady and consistent and looks calm.  I
> agree to that.
>
> Veronica
> [image: DCSIMG]
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Julie Krueger <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
> *To:* lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> *Sent:* Monday, October 27, 2008 1:16 PM
> *Subject:* [lit-ideas] Obama, McCain & Milton
>
>
> http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/the-power-of-passive-campaigning/?8ty&emc=ty
>
> Other than the last paragraph (Republicans model their philosophy after
> Jesus???), and what I think is a misuse of the word "passive", I find this
> piece pretty interesting.  (I do love George Will's reference to O. as the
> Fred Astaire of politics...I hadn't seen that one.)
>
> Reactions, anyone?  Different "readings"?
>
>  October 26, 2008, 9:30 pm The Power of Passive Campaigning By Stanley
> Fish <http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/author/stanley-fish/>
>
> In the aftermath of the 2000 and 2004 elections, the post-mortem verdict
> was that the Republicans had run a better campaign. They knew how to seize
> or manufacture an issue. They were able to master the dynamics of negative
> advertising. They kept on message. Now, when many print and TV commentators
> are predicting if not assuming an Obama victory, the conventional wisdom is
> that this time the Democrats have run a better campaign.
>
> When did the Democrats smarten up? When did they learn how to outdo the
> Republicans at their own game?
>
> The answer is that they didn't. They decided — or rather Obama decided — to
> play another game, one we haven't seen for a while, and it's a question as
> to whether we've ever seen it. The name of this game is straightforward
> campaigning, or rather straightforward non-campaigning.
>
> We saw it in the 10 days when the activity around the mounting economic
> crisis was at its height. Henry Paulson alternated between scaring members
> of Congress and scaring the public. Nancy Pelosi alternated between playing
> the responsible Congressional statesperson and playing the partisan attack
> dog. Media commentators went from one hysterical prediction to another. John
> McCain went from saying there's nothing to worry about to saying there's
> everything to worry about to saying that he would fix everything by
> suspending his campaign to saying that he was not suspending his campaign
> and that he would debate after all.
>
> And Barack Obama? He didn't do much and he said less (O.K., he did say some
> reassuring, optimistic things), and his poll numbers went up.
>
> Weeks later, the pattern continues, but in an even more intense form. The
> McCain campaign huffs and puffs and jumps from charge to charge: Obama
> consorts with terrorists; he's a socialist; he's a communist; he is
> un-American; he's not one of us; he's a celebrity; he's going to take your
> money and give it to people who never did a day's work; he's going to sell
> out Israel; he'll cozy up to foreign dictators; he's measuring the drapes.
>
> In response, Obama explains his tax policy for the umpteenth time, points
> out that capitalists like Warren Buffet support him, details his
> relationship with Bill Ayers, lists those he consults with, observes that
> Senator McCain, by his own boast, voted with President George W. Bush 90
> percent of the time, and calls for change.
>
> What he (or his campaign) doesn't do is bring up the Keating Five, or make
> veiled references to McCain's treatment of his first wife, or make fun of
> Sarah Palin (she doesn't need any help), or disparage his opponent's
> experience, or hint at the disabilities of age. He just stands there looking
> languid (George Will called him the Fred Astaire of politics), always
> smiling and never raising his voice.
>
> Meanwhile, McCain's surrogates get red in the face on TV when they try to
> explain away the latest jaw-dropping thing Sarah Palin has said, or proclaim
> that anything can happen in seven days, or respond to ever more discouraging
> poll numbers by saying (how's this for a weak cliché) that the only poll
> that counts is the poll on election day. (I know things are bad when my
> wife, a staunch Democrat, feels sorry for them.)
>
> What's going on here? I find an answer in a most unlikely place, John
> Milton's "Paradise Regained," a four-book poem in which a very busy and
> agitated Satan dances around a preternaturally still Jesus until, driven
> half-crazy by the response he's not getting, the arch-rebel (i.e., maverick)
> loses it, crying in exasperation, "What dost thou in this world?"
>
> Now, I don't mean to suggest that McCain is the devil or that Obama is the
> Messiah (although some of his supporters think of him that way), just that
> the rhetorical strategies the two literary figures employ match up with the
> strategies employed by the two candidates. What Satan wants to do is draw
> Jesus out, provoke him to an unwisely exasperated response, get him to claim
> too much for his own powers. What Jesus does is reply with an equanimity
> conveyed by the adjectives and adverbs that preface his words: "unaltered,"
> "temperately," "patiently," "calmly," "unmoved," "sagely," "in brief."
>
> In response, Satan gets ever more desperate; he conjures up rain and wind
> storms (in the midst of which Jesus sits "unappalled in calm"); he tempts
> him with the riches of poetry and philosophy (which Jesus is careful neither
> to reject nor deify); and finally, having run out of schemes and scares and
> "swollen with rage," he resorts to physical violence (McCain has not gone so
> far, although some of his supporters clearly want to), picking Jesus up
> bodily and depositing him on the spire of the temple in the hope that he
> will either fall to his death or turn into Superman and undermine the entire
> point of his 40-day trial in the wilderness. He doesn't do either. He does
> nothing, and Satan, "smitten with amazement" — even this hasn't worked —
> "fell."
>
> Toward the end, the poem describes the mighty contest in a metaphor that
> captures its odd and negative dynamic. Jesus is "a solid rock" continually
> assaulted by "surging waves"; and even though the repeated assaults result
> only in the waves being "all to shivers dashed," they keep on coming until
> they exhaust themselves "in froth or bubbles." The power Jesus generates is
> the power of not moving from the still center of his being and refusing to
> step into an arena of action defined by his opponent. So it is with Obama,
> who barely exerts himself and absorbs attack after attack, each of which,
> rather than wounding him, leaves him stronger. It's rope-a-dope on a grand
> scale.
>
> And McCain knows it. Last Wednesday, campaigning in New Hampshire, he spoke
> sneeringly about Obama's campaign being "disciplined and careful." That's
> exactly right, and so far the combination of discipline and care — care not
> to get out too far in front of anything — along with a boatload of money is
> working just fine. Jesus is usually the political model for Republicans, but
> this time his brand of passive, patient leadership is being channeled by a
> Democrat.
> [image: DCSIMG]
> --
> Julie Krueger
>
>
>


-- 
Julie Krueger

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